Half-Life 1
Gordon Freeman rides the tram to his underground lab at 8:47AM; little does he realize that it is the calm before the storm. The public announcement system announces the most recent news, making ironic comments about hazardous substances and urinalysis tests, as disturbingly large pools of radioactive waste pass by him. Doors clunk open and close again behind him as he goes slowly underground to the test chamber. From the windows, Gordon can see nuclear missiles ready for transport to launch sites, robots nearly crashing into the tram, and the intricate workings of the Black Mesa Research Facility revealing themselves as being fragile, and more often than not, broken. Bashing on a locked door, Barney Calhoun passes by as Gordon silently continues his trip. At a robot crossing, the tram is stopped, and on the left, a mysterious man in a blue suit (G-man) stares blankly past him. Eventually, the tram reaches its destination, and after stepping out onto the precarious catwalk, Gordon's day only just begins. Arriving at the Sector C Test Labs, his usual place of work, Gordon dons his HEV Suit and checks his locker, as per routine. Continuing down to the lab once more, Gordon finds himself face to face with the people conducting his test. They inform him that they have a unique and large sample of anonymous origin, and that they will be deviating from normal procedure to accommodate for this. Carrying on through more doors and past more scientists, he enters the chamber, and the large metal door closes behind him. Following the normal procedure, he goes up the ladder to the control panel and presses the button to start the rotors on the excessively huge Anti-Mass Spectrometer suspended from the ceiling. Going back down, he waits for the sample to arrive in its cart. Rising up from below, the sample arrives at last. "Standard procedure for a non-standard specimen," they assure him from above. "Go ahead, Gordon." Taking the cart in hand, he pushes it nonchalantly into the beam. All that happens next became something of a blur. Screaming from the scientists, telling him to stop, but drowning that out, the deafening sound of explosions, and flashes of green light that leave fading marks on his retina. Then black. All that can be heard is the sound of his heavy breathing. Another flash of green, and he's on a strange alien world (Xen). Just within the pool of green light around him, odd-looking bipedal lifeforms stare at him, confused about why he's there. More so, Gordon wonders where he could possibly be. Another flash of green and he's back in the destroyed test chamber, feeling considerably worse for wear after his entirely other worldly experience - but it's certainly not over yet. As Gordon Freeman's efforts to reach the surface to get help in the aftermath of the Resonance Cascade begin, more problems get in his way. The building is falling apart around him, and mysterious alien creatures are materializing from thin air. Gordon acquires his trademark crowbar to help him get past obstacles, and later he can steal guns and other weapons to aid in his escape. After being told that all communication outside Black Mesa has been lost, Gordon is requested by his colleague Eli Vance to try to make it to the surface in order to acquire help. Black Mesa has received massive structural damage, and to make matters worse, aliens from the borderworld Xen begin to teleport in around them. Most are reacting to their new surroundings, but even more hostile are the creatures Gordon saw earlier (called Vortigaunts). Gordon occasionally witnesses the man in the suit, the G-Man, watching him from out-of-reach places, always walking off before Gordon can get to him. Since the tram is too damaged to work, Gordon must cross Sector B's Coolant Reserve Facility in order to find a way out. Minutes after the Resonance Cascade, Gordon reaches the office complex, where several scientists are barricaded into their rooms, hiding from the rampant aliens appearing inside the complex. He then hears rumors from these scientists that the military have arrived to rescue the people trapped in the facility. Gordon Freeman is making good progress, passing through various storage and staging areas, continuing his hunt for a way to the surface. Gordon learns that the soldiers rumored to be coming on a rescue mission have already arrived. He attempts to join up with them, but walks into a room to witness a Marine killing a scientist. It is then that he discovers that the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, which has taken control of Black Mesa, is not just killing the aliens, they are also targeting everyone connected to the project, including himself. When he eventually reaches the surface, Gordon finds himself in an area totally under the control of the military and, worse, in the middle of an artillery bombardment - taking cover, he is forced back into the underground complex. However, it is revealed that the surviving members of the Lambda Team (in the Sector F Lambda Complex at the other end of the facility) may be able to close the dimensional rift. Therefore, Gordon begins the journey across Black Mesa to reach them. Gordon Freeman enters an abandoned, largely sealed-off area of Black Mesa dating back to its earlier days as a missile complex, full of mothballed machinery and now used as a dumping ground for toxic waste from the rest of the facility, where the HECU soldiers have yet to get a good foothold because of the high concentration of aliens in the area. It is here that Gordon faces a deadly new foe, the Tentacle. However, after reactivating the fuel, power, and oxygen lines, Gordon is able to kill the Tentacle by using the rocket engine at the top of the silo that the Tentacles were inhabiting, and finds a way out through the meters-long dirt tunnel dug by the Tentacle. Trying to reach the surface once more, Gordon's progress is thwarted by a clash between a Gargantua and HECU soldiers in the Sector E Materials Transport. He then learns from a dying security guard that if he restores the generator, he can ride the monorail to the surface. Freeman enters the Houndeye-infested subterranean areas and activates the generator, restoring power to the vicinity. After activating more switches, he destroys the Gargantua patrolling the area by turning on the huge transformers supplying power to the tram line. Hitching a ride, he smashes through a barricade of concrete blocks before continuing on his way. As Gordon Freeman rides a monorail in the Materials Transport section of Black Mesa, he learns from a security guard that he must ride to the High Altitude Launch Center to launch a satellite, which the Lambda Team can use to reverse the effects of the Resonance Cascade. He also discovers the HECU's true hatred for him, as well as larger reinforcements: sandbag bunkers with rapid-fire sniper rifles, mounted machine gun turrets (manual and automated), and even mounted rocket launchers. After going round in circles, it seems, for a while, he goes up several elevators and at last reaches the surface again. At the launch site, he sends the rocket up into orbit, and regretfully goes back below ground. Continuing towards the surface, Gordon encounters a terrifying new aquatic creature, the Ichthyosaur, and acquires a Black Mesa Crossbow to fight it. After an underwater battle with the creature, he manages to escape and get back on his way. After battling with the Black Ops, another "rescue" crew trying to kill even the marines, Freeman is captured by the HECU. They remove all of his weapons, and leave him for dead in a trash compactor. Thankfully, Freeman escapes once again, making his way back into the battle. After escaping from the trash compactor and getting back to the surface, Gordon stumbles towards a mostly abandoned part of the facility, meant for processing and disposing of waste and hazardous materials. Dodging and jumping through antiquated compaction machines, great vats of green waste, and slipping through furnaces, as well as riding on gravity-defying conveyor belts, Freeman escapes to a hidden part of the facility. After escaping, Gordon eventually winds up in a secret part of the facility where he discovers that scientists had been "collecting" specimens from Xen long before this whole mess occurred. In it, Gordon Freeman continues to rearm himself against the HECU, and rejoins the battle against these enemies. Gordon also encounters the alien military units, the Alien Grunts, and he finds one of the most powerful weapons in the Half-Life universe, the Tau Cannon, after a security guard accidentally blows himself up, a scientist, and a wall by overcharging it. Soon, he heads outside to search for the Lambda Complex. After arming himself with advanced prototype weaponry, Gordon again reaches the surface. It has become a war zone. The Vortigaunts, along with Alien Grunts and Gargantuas, have begun making determined attacks against the Marines, and the tide of the battle is beginning to turn in favor of the aliens. The Marines call in reinforcements, but it isn't enough. Gordon must scale cliffs and navigate the bombed out buildings while avoiding both sides as the forces of Xen begin to dominate the battlefield. Finally, Gordon reaches relative safety underground. The HECU determine that they're fighting a losing battle against the Xen aliens and, having continually failed to neutralize Freeman, abandon their mission and begin to evacuate the facility, calling in air strikes and heavy artillery to cover their retreat. Meanwhile, Gordon makes his way into an underground storage garage to avoid the bombardments, and eventually fights his way through scores of aliens and several groups of the decimated HECU forces before reaching the Lambda Complex. The Marines begin to evacuate Black Mesa and air strikes begin. Gordon navigates underground water channels and tries to avoid scores of alien invaders as they pick off remaining Marine stragglers. In this chapter, Gordon arrives at the Lambda Complex, where he believed the science team to be sheltering from the Xenians, only to find that the majority of the complex is now overrun by hostile creatures. He is informed that he must flood the reactor chambers in order to access the core, and that a team of scientists is waiting for him at the tip of the reactor. Gordon must then navigate through the Lambda Core, facing numerous assaults from the Xen forces (the primary enemy, now that the HECU has pulled out). In the end, he learns that Nihilanth is hosting the invasion, and that he must teleport to Xen to stop it. After much struggle, Gordon finally reaches the Lambda Complex, where he discovers that the Lambda Complex is where they developed the teleportation technology that allowed scientists to travel to Xen in the first place. The handful of surviving personnel, who have held themselves up in a small stronghold, inform Gordon that, unfortunately, the satellite he launched was not able to reverse the effects of the Resonance Cascade because an immensely powerful being on the other side is keeping the portal between the worlds open, and Gordon must kill it to prevent the Xen aliens from taking over completely. But before being teleported to Xen, Gordon gains access to several ammunition, health and HEV-charge caches, the Gluon Gun, and he is finally reunited with the Long Jump Module (not seen since the Hazard Course). After an attempted interception by Alien Controllers, the scientists activate the teleporter and Gordon is teleported to Xen. Gordon Freeman arrives in the borderworld of Xen. On the strange borderworld, Gordon encounters many of the aliens that had been teleported into Black Mesa in their natural habitats, as well as the remains of some HEV-wearing researchers who came before him. In order to progress, he needs to re-activate a portal inside one of the islands in order to venture more of Xen's perimeters. Freeman is made to face one of the Nihilanth's most powerful minions: the Gonarch in her lair. Gordon's journey across Xen continues, but his supplies are running short, spent on destroying the Gonarch. He also comes across the Xen army's Alien Grunt cloning facility, where the army is created. It can be noted that the Vortigaunts in one of the factories are not hostile towards the player, and will ignore him unless attacked. In a vast cave, Gordon finally confronts the powerful and mysterious being that is holding the portal open. Gordon destroys the Nihilanth's shield, allowing him to destroy its vulnerable brain. As the creature dies, it floats toward the ceiling, and explodes in a giant green blast that overpowers Gordon's senses. When Gordon comes to, he is confronted by the G-Man. Both are transported to various locales around Xen, while the G-Man praises Gordon's actions in the borderworld (which he refers to as "a nasty piece of work"). He explains that his "employers", agreeing that Gordon has "limitless potential", have authorized him to offer Freeman a job. The final teleportation takes Gordon to the same tramcar that he rode on at the beginning of the game, but apparently flying through space at immense speed. Gordon accepts this offer by stepping though a portal, and, finding himself floating in nothingness, hears the G-Man's voice one last time: "Wisely done, Mr. Freeman, I will see you up ahead..." The story continues from this point in Half-Life 2. Alternatively, the player may choose not to step into the portal in the final scene. This causes the unarmed Gordon to be teleported into a giant cave facing rows of Alien Grunts and Manta Rays as the game ends with the G-Man's comment, "Well, it looks like we won't be working together. No regrets, Mr. Freeman." Gordon's appearance in Half-Life 2 suggests that this ending is non-canonical. Following this scene is a status report saying, "Subject: Freeman; Status: Observation terminated; Post Mortem: Subject declined offer of employment."